'I was lucky to have a dad:' Sask. historian Bill Waiser on why he remembers

For historian Bill Waiser, Remembrance Day has personal meaning for him. His great-uncle never returned from the First World War. His father was injured in the Second. 

But as Waiser explains, he is among the thousands of people from Saskatchewan who were impacted by the First World War — 44,000 people served from this province, and 5,000 never came home.

When the war began men and women were enlisting in the forces and women in nursing services in droves. In Saskatoon, the impact was felt particularly at the university which encouraged students to enlist. The college of engineering was shut down for a year. 

"There is intense pressure," Waiser said."Communities competed to get battalions up to strength and off overseas."

If soldiers left from Saskatoon they were given a send-off down by the old railway station where the Midtown Plaza is today. 

"The idea of the send-off is that they're going from citizen to soldier and crossing that threshold to war."

Waiser said those that didn't volunteer, were under pressure and frequently shamed. 

But after 1915, when soldiers started returning home with crippling injuries, enlistment fell off, and conscription was introduced in 1917. 

The dead and the missing

Sixty thousand Canadians died in the war. They were buried overseas where they fell in battle. Waiser has visited the battlefields and cemeteries of Europe where headstones mark those who died.

"What you don't see are the missing because there were a lot of soldiers that were never found ," he said. 

His great-uncle, William Stuart Ritchie, volunteered in 1915 with the 4th Canadian Mounted Rifles. He was killed in 1916 at the age of 29 near Courcelette in northern France.

"He had a temporary grave, but by the time that battle's over — it lasted several months — because of artillery shelling, his grave was literally blown up, he was never found."

Waiser has visited a memorial in Ypres where there is a memorial to 50,000 missing.

​Those left behind

Back at home during the war, women were struggling to get by with what they could. There was rationing. And although some women could receive a separation income and the Canadian Patriotic Fund, women had to be in great need.  

"One of the hardest impacts was on children. These are kids growing up without their fathers, without uncles, maybe without brothers."  Waiser said his great-uncle William left behind two children. 

"So my great aunt becomes a widow left with two children and trying to find a way to get on."

Aftermath

As the soldiers came home, many brought with them the horrors of what they experienced. Some soldiers returned with PTSD, which was known at the time as shell shock. 

Seventy per cent of the deaths in battle were caused by artillery, Waiser said.

"The constant bombardment, the constant shelling, the shrapnel raining down, the noise, the smell, the smell of death, the site of dead bodies out in no man's land. So it's horrific conditions, truly horrific conditions," he described. 

Waiser said the soldiers were often labeled as weak and left without support. 

Meanwhile, the world they left before the war had changed dramatically.

"Everybody wanted to get back to normal in 1918, and the irony is that the world that Canada had set out to save in 1914 was not the world that Canadians came home to in 1918," Waiser explained.  

The role of the state had changed, becoming more interventionist. The Spanish flu devastated communities as it spread west as soldiers returned home in the demobilization. The flu killed as many as during the First World War. 

"The whole world is turned upside down," Waiser said leading to what are known as "the decades of discord."

Personal connection to history 

In addition to losing his great-uncle in the First World War, his father served in the Second World War. 

"I was lucky to have a dad," Waiser said. His father was injured twice in a tank. 

"In fact, my father was 40 when I was born because the Depression and war got in the way."

Waiser said his visits to Europe have also instilled in him a duty to remember. 

"When you visit these battlefields, you got to to realize that these these men and women were just like you and I. They had hopes, dreams and ambitions that were never realized. They sacrificed their lives and they should never be forgotten."